NT teachers to strike after negotiations break down over cuts

Northern Territory teachers plan to strike next week over staff cuts and pay.

The Australian Education Union NT branch (AEUNT) has been in negotiations with the Territory Government for a year, but recently-elected NT branch president Jarvis Ryan has announced teachers at public schools in Darwin and Palmerston will walk out of classrooms next Wednesday at 12:30pm.

Mr Ryan said the union has already voted to reject two government pay offers, the last in June, and the Government would not admit that it has made staff cuts to government schools.

"They keep saying it's about pay and we keep saying 'You've cut funding out of the system, we want the cuts reversed, we want our teachers back, we want the resources back in schools', and they won't do that," he said.

Education Minister Peter Chandler has questioned the timing of the strike as the NT Government prepares for the Casuarina by-election and urged Mr Ryan to stop next week's industrial action.

"There are teachers out there who talk to me regularly about the cost of living in Darwin and how a hundred dollars a week could help them, and the only ones stopping them from getting that money is their own union."

He said there have been staff reductions, mostly within the Education Department but student numbers have not increased beyond 27 per classroom.

"There's been some cuts in the back room. If I have taken 40 senior executives out of a department, has there been a saving? Yes there's been a saving. But none of these measures has had an effect in the classroom."

But the AEUNT has warned the Government's new policy to give more power over budgets and staff to school councils and principals could see staff numbers reduced further.

"The Government is proceeding with a policy of increasing school autonomy. They're selling it as a great new reform for schools, we're concerned this is going to be part of a new round of squeezing for schools, to rein in their budgets," Mr Ryan said.

He said there was no evidence increasing school autonomy improves student outcomes.